Today was absolutely crazy, long, amazing, everything!! I woke up this morning at a nice 7am, got all of my stuff together and bundled up for a long day! I brought 3 pairs of socks, 3 water bottles, another change of clothes and shoes, two sandwiches, popcorn, frosted flakes and tons of warm clothes!! Of course I also had my lovely hiking boots on too :) We walked to UCC at 8 and got on the buses to leave at 8:30. We took a 2 hour bus ride to County Waterford and finally arrived at our hiking site, Mahon Falls. It was HUGE and sooo cool to look out. It was hard to see from a distance, but there was a waterfall and it was soo gorgeous. The big group was split into three smaller groups and of course my friends and I (the overachievers..) decided to go with the hardest group/trail!! So we took off around 11:00 and it was nice and sunny and actually a really nice day! Immediately the trail was really steep and we were making progress pretty fast because the leaders were moving at a pretty fast pace

! So we sucked it up, mind over matter, and pushed and dug our feet into the mud and slushy wet that was the mountain! It was really nice and clear until we got to a certain point. At that point we basically walked into a cloud and it started getting "foggy." STILL GOING UP! The ground was incredibly wet, but as we kept going up, it got harder and was basically frozen. Then it started to freezing rain and snow! It was SOO COLD at the top of the mountain, and hard to see at some parts. When we got to the edge of the cliff you couldn't see anything at all, you saw the edge of the cliff and then it was just white. However, I'm going to assume that it was a pretty far drop haha A few minutes later we stopped at a spot with some rocks and ate lunch. It was absolutely freezing and snowing, so I ate with my gloves on haha Then we had a little way more to go up and then we started our descent! For me, the descent hurt more because it put a lot of pressure on my knees! (it was pretty steep!) On the way down we encountered a lot of sheep, and when we came by they "baa-ed" and ran away! It was also super squishy on the way down and I sunk into a few holes. Talk about mud!! (As Grandpa Q says, and I told my friends, "mud is pure") But, finally after a long day and hike of being freezing and tired we made it back at 4:45 and had circled up and around the entire mountain! I felt so accomplished, but also super tired :P So we tried to warm up on the bus, then stopped for some food on the way back, and finally made it back to the dorms for a warm shower :)) It was such a fun day, but also a very tiring day, so it's time for me to go to bedd!! Goodnight!!<3